There’s an apparently controversial, apparently dirty-little-secret bottom line to the question of whether Caitlin Clark should have made the United States women’s basketball team for the Olympics: The players who made the roster are better.

Better at basketball, right now, better suited for the primary goal of returning from Paris with gold medals.

“It’s the most competitive team in the world,” Clark said this weekend after her exclusion became public. “You look at that roster, a lot of players I’ve already had the opportunity to play in this league that are just so good … The 12 they have selected are really great players, so they’re in pretty good hands.”

Maybe she was just being gracious, but she was also spot-on.
Caitlin Clark did not make USA Basketball’s 12-woman roster for the 2024 Olympics. USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con
Clark is going to be great. But as the phenom’s brick-and-turnover-filled first month playing against the world’s best in the WNBA has demonstrated, she’s just not quite there yet. There’s little shame in being the 14th most eligible player in the country.

The Olympics should not be a popularity contest, a sports-themed reality show (“for setting the college scoring record, you receive immunity in the next elimination challenge”) or grounds for a ratings gimmick.

Tiger Woods won’t — and shouldn’t — get a Team USA spot, for the clicks. Alex Morgan doesn’t get to cite her social media following in the merciless women’s soccer cutdowns.

If NBC can’t sell the story of a star-studded international dynasty going for an eighth straight gold medal, that’s an NBC problem, an advertiser problem, not a USA Basketball problem.

The promos can feature A’ja Wilson, the best player in the world. They have Breanna Stewart and Alyssa Thomas and Napheesa Collier, in their primes. There’s Brittney Griner, off a bid in the gulag, standing tall and representing the land of the free.

Perhaps there is some missed opportunity to “grow the game,” a phrase that means welcoming in new women’s basketball viewers — such as any Clark devotees who only will tune in if she’s involved — when it doesn’t stand in for selling to the lowest denominator.
Caitlin Clark (22) has had her share of struggles as a WNBA rookie. USA TODAY Sports via Reuters Con
The TV networks spent January through April in the short-term marketing play of: Caitlin Clark Goes for the Scoring Record and Oh Yeah, Some Other College Players, Too. The WNBA’s commercial arms have engaged in similar practices.

Can’t we take a two-week break from the boardroom imperatives and simply maximize the chances of beating Japan, Belgium and Germany and polishing off the medal rounds to return to the top of the podium?

As with any snub — All-Star berths, Best Actor nominations, tastiest Thai dinners under $25 — tell me who you’re cutting to get Clark a goodwill perch on the end of the bench.

It’s not Sabrina Ionescu, a roster cut in 2021 when in the role of America’s most famous post-college player and now playing the best ball of her career for the Liberty. It’s not Kahleah Copper or Jackie Young, just because you haven’t seen them in State Farm commercials.
Sabrina Ionescu made her first Olympics roster. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST

The best pure basketball case is against Diana Taurasi, whose preseason caution that “reality is coming” for Clark in the WNBA marked her as a hater until she turned out to be 100 percent correct.

Taurasi will be 42, she has slowed significantly on the defensive end of the floor and she’s shooting just 41.3 percent from the field and 34 percent from 3 this season in the WNBA (Clark is at 37.3 and 32.7, by the way).

But Taurasi has given half of her life to the USA program — you tell the legend to step aside from the pursuit of a historic sixth gold medal to shoehorn a rookie into the spotlight.

(Here’s where we mention USA starting point guard Chelsea Gray hasn’t played a competitive game in eight months due to a foot injury and Clark was tipped Monday as the first guard in line to join the roster in case of injury.)

Clark didn’t get left off the roster because of dues-paying or financial resentments or anxieties about her vociferous fan base, or almost entirely not for those reasons. She didn’t make it because there are 12 players who are currently better.

And that’s how it should be.

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